How to Prepare Furniture for a Long-Distance Move

How to prepare furniture for long-distance moving

On a local move a scuffed table is an annoyance. On an interstate move the same piece is loaded once, may share a trailer with other shipments, and is unloaded days later by a different crew, so the preparation you do before the survey decides both the price and the condition it arrives in.

Weight is the main input on an interstate estimate. Our home-size profiles assume 6,800 lbs–9,500 lbs for a 3-bedroom home; furniture is most of that, which is why the survey spends its time on it.

Take apart what does not travel whole

Disassemble bed frames, table legs, desk hutches, sectional connectors and wall-mounted items. Put the screws and brackets for each piece in a zip bag, label it with the piece's name and tape it to the largest part, or keep all the bags in one box that rides with you. Photograph anything complex before you take it apart.

Leave glued or factory-assembled furniture alone; forcing it apart does more damage than the move.

What movers pad-wrap and what you box

A full-service crew wraps furniture in moving pads and shrink-wrap as part of loading: sofas, tables, dressers, headboards, chairs. Mattresses go in mattress bags. What the crew does not do, unless you buy packing, is box the contents: books, kitchenware, clothes, decor and anything loose inside drawers.

If you would rather not box yourself, the packing line on the estimate is where it shows up. In our model a 3-bedroom move of 1,000 miles is $4,750–$6,350 without packing, $5,050–$6,750 with partial packing and $5,500–$7,350 with full packing. See the professional packing cost guide for what each level includes.

• Empty drawers completely; full drawers can crack runners and add weight.
• Remove glass shelves and tops and wrap them separately.
• Wrap table legs and mirror corners even if the crew will pad them too.

Measure doorways, stairs and the truck path

Measure the largest pieces (height, width, depth and the diagonal) and every doorway, stair turn and elevator they must pass at both addresses. A sofa that came in before a renovation may not go out after it. Tell the estimator about narrow stairs, long walks to the truck or elevator bookings; access affects crew time at both ends.

Valuables and documents stay with you

Jewelry, cash, passports, birth certificates, property and vehicle titles, medication and hard drives should travel with you, not in the truck. Federal rules let carriers limit their liability for items of extraordinary value that are not listed on the shipping documents, so anything you do ship of high value should be declared.

Build the inventory list for the survey

The estimate can only be as accurate as the inventory. Before the survey, walk every room, the garage, the attic and any storage unit, and write down what is going and what is not. Show the estimator everything, including what is in closets, and say what you plan to sell. A written estimate must be based on a survey of the goods, so anything left out is priced later, at delivery.

For context on the item counts behind each home size, our profiles run from 2,400 lbs for a 1-bedroom to 13,000 lbs for a 4-bedroom. Compare movers on the long-distance movers overview once you have the list.